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Janet van Dyne
In Cracksmash, Janet van Dyne is a genetically modified human who joins the team several months after its formation. Pre-Avengers Days Janet is the daughter of Vernon van Dyne, former CEO of Van Dyne Industries and a physicist working with gamma radiation. About two years before the beginning of Cracksmash, Jan's father was killed in an experiment gone wrong when he inadvertently opened a portal to a dimension and let through an alien who's body's composition was deadly to humans. Desiring to avenge her father's death and make sure the creature harmed no one else, Jan called upon Hank Pym for assistance. Hank genetically modified Jan's body using Pym particles and cells specialized to generate wasp wings at small sizes, allowing her to change her size, fly, and harness her body's electrical potential to produce a dangerous "wasp sting". Joining the Team Jan first encountered the Avengers after they return from Florida. Tony had invited her to come to the tower while he was gone, and she had taken him up on the offer. Unfortunately, Hank had decided to bring along some of his research to work on - an AI security system he called Ultron - and attempted to integrate it into the tower's defenses. Ultron unexpectedly took over, and Jan escaped from the levels first flooded with smaller robots tied to the main consciousness. She found the Avengers and joined them in shutting down Ultron. Though Hank was under SHIELD scrutiny for the creation of Ultron, Jan (to her knowledge), was not. She began to come to the tower more often, spending time with the Avengers and even participating in Clint Barton's game of laser tag. However, she was concerned that Hank's research could go badly again, and not being a scientist herself, asked both Bruce and Tony to take a look at his research proposals before she put forth funding for them. Hank found this to be a betrayal, though things did not yet become heated. While attempting to have a lunch out, moloids errupted from the sewers of New York. Jan abandoned the lunch as began to fight, while Hank - not having his suit or equipment, was left behind at the resturaunt. The Avengers swiftly arrived, and Jan aided them in containing the moloid menace, and then in investigating the sewers, where they found the Mole Man's lair. Once the threat was contained, Jan hurried back to the surface, worried that Hank might have been injured in the fight. Unharmed, the two embraced and then Hank took Jan, who was shaken by the fight - the largest she'd been in against organic creatures - back to his lab. Several days later, Captain America visited Jan at her apartment and offered her a place on the Avengers. Though a bit uncertain as to how helpful she would be on the team, Jan joyously accepted. Break-up After being made part of the Avengers by Steve, Jan called up Hank to let him know. Her excitement was dampered by his lack thereof, and he asserted that they had only asked her to be an Avenger so that SHIELD could keep a better eye on him. She agreed with his words and hung up. Later that day, she was invited to dinner by Tony, Bruce, and Natasha, to which she initially declined. Tony texted her repeatedly, flattering her until she relented, and she went to dinner with them, where they were joined by Steve and eventually Clint. She was still in a very subdued mood from her conversation with Hank, and drank too much at dinner, shutting off her cell phone so as not to make any calls or texts that she would regret. In the morning, she turned on her phone to find a number of increasingly frantic texts from Hank, concerned that she hadn't responded to his texts and by her absence from her apartment (he had sent some ants to check on her when he couldn't get hold of her). She texted back, revealing to him that she had been drinking with friends the night before. Hank came over, assuming that the friend she's talking about is Tony - who he viewed her as spending too much time with lately. They talked, and though Hank initially attempted to apologize for the things he said over the phone the day before, the discussion quickly turned into an argument. Hank accused Janet of cheating on him with Tony, and Jan responded with anger and harsh words. He effectively said that she was selling him out to SHIELD - showing his research to Bruce and Tony - and the argument escalateed until Jan said that she was "not sleeping with Tony, but maybe she should be", to which Hank stormed out, slamming the door behind him. Early Avengers Days Shortly after joining the team, Jan was called upon to be part of the team to rescue Tony from Doctor Doom. Though she was originally very much underpowered and undertrained compared to the rest of the team, Jan was a prime candidate to infiltrate Doom's fortress due to her ability to shrink to very small sizes. Upon learning that Tony had gone missing, the team traveled to France in search of clues as to where he might be. Jan, who rather compulsively checks her phone, was the first to find an article about a plane going down over Latveria, and made the connection that the plane was Tony's. While Jac and Clint attended a ball at Doom's fortress, Jan hitched a ride in Clint's pocket and then found her way into the ventilation shafts. She fought several miniature Doombots, but eventually made her way to where Tony was being kept. In the fight with the Doombots, Jan ended up being injured. Upon returning to Avengers Tower and being treated by Bruce for burns on her side, Jan stayed the night, then headed back home in the morning. Unfortunately, she ran into Hank in the lobby of the tower. They had a teary reunion that nearly resulted in reconcilliation, but upon discovering that Jan was injured - and that she had been injured helping Tony - Hank grew angry. When Steve showed up, the two began to argue over Janet being an Avenger, with Hank stating that Steve would end up getting her killed. Jan eventually put a stop to the argument, stating that being an Avenger was her choice and that she wasn't going to change her mind. Afterwards, she unnecessarily apologized to Steve for involving him in the fight. The two continued to talk for some time, and Steve invited her to go running with him sometime, as well as suggested. that maybe they should have dinner sometime before he awkwardly scuttled away. Upon returning home, Jan emailed Hank, apologizing for the argument but not backing down from her position. Hank told her not to contact him again. Jan was present during the Great Chicken Pot Pie fight, spending most of the time hiding under a table with Bruce while Tony and Thor threw food at each other. After the fight, she and Tony played a rather dangerous game of flirt-chicken, which ended with him kissing her. Jan and Natasha had a ladies night out in which they ate gelato, drank wine, went dancing, and drank more wine. While it was a very fun night, Jan ended up drunk, and Natasha hauled her back to the Tower, setting her up on the couch in the lounge with water. Steve stumbled upon her there, and Jan drunkenly rambled at him for a bit, before throwing up in the bathroom. Unfortunately, he asked her about Hank, and she ended up crying all over him again. When Batroc the Leaper broke into Hank's lab and stole his helmet, Jan was the first one on the scene. She and Iron Fist fought Batroc and she managed to recover Hank's helmet. She returned it to him, whereupon they had another awkward conversation that ended with nothing really resolved between them. Around this time, Janet had Tony reprogram her headset to receive communications from the Avengers ID cards. When Steve returned from several weeks away visiting graves and looking up old friends, he and Jan ran into each other in the elevator, and Jan realized upon seeing him again that she had, in fact, developed feelings for him. The Bodyswap When Loki swapped all the Avengers into other bodies, Janet ended up in Tony's body. She whole up in his lab and initially panicked because of the pressure of the arc reactor in her chest. Upon realizing what had happened, she attempted to get in contact with all the other Avengers, trying to make sure that they could all safely get to the Tower from wherever they were. She had to talk Steve through the process of changing size when he inadvertently shrank while swapped into her body. As Tony, she is able to lock down the level of the Tower where Natasha (in Bruce's body) and Clint (in Thor's body) are, at Clint's request. She joins in with the brainstorming as to what occured, and it's during this time that she officially meets Betty for the first time. Eventually, the team decides to bring in Hank to help with the problem, and Jan calls him. When he arrives, they tell him about what occured, and at first he believes it to be some sort of horrible pranks. Jan tries to convince him by telling him some details about their relationship, but instead only manages to make him think that he's had a mental breakdown. She eventually manages to talk him down by telling him two facts that only she would know and that she never would have told Tony: that his helmet was designed by Maria Trovaya, and that his greatest fear is losing his mind. Janet's Dream Jan eventually falls asleep, and when she does Loki steps into her mind. In her dream, Loki finds himself in a trashed lab, where Hank Pym is working with a small insect pinning block and has several tags written out for it. The first says: New York City, NY 28 June 2009 H. Pym and the second reads: Hymenoptera Vespidae Loki questions Hank about what he is doing, and he begins to tell him about the process of preserving insects. He talks about methods for killing them prior to pinning, and says that freezing them is the most humane way to kill them. He goes to a refrigerator and opens the freezer portion, pulling out a vial that contains the tiny form of Janet. He jealously guards the vial from Loki when he tries to look at it, then places Jan's body on the pinning block and prepares to place a pin through her heart. When she begins to twitch, he scoops her back into the vial, stating that sometimes insects have to be refrozen, because one time in the freezer is not enough to kill them. Loki attempts to get a closer look at her before Hank can put her away, but Hank keeps her close once more and it is revealed that he is chewing bubble gum. When Loki calls him Dr. Pym, Hank replies that Dr. Pym isn't around, and that when Jan leaves, Hank goes away. In the vial, Jan wakes up and attempts to escape. Hank attempts to convince her to stay in the vial, and Loki, fed up with and distrubed by the dream, tells her that he isn't the one trapping her. Jan shatters the vial with her sting, and the dream Hank breaks into yellow jackets that fly away. At this point, Jan is seemingly aware that she is in a dream, and converses with Loki for some time, questioning his reasons for swapping their bodies. She learns that Loki aided her in Latveria, and that he believes the bodyswap is a learning experience for all of them that will make them stronger.